MR MAC QUEEN. 



393 



It was no ' petty point of explorer's etiquette,' 

 as some reviewer generously put the case, wliicli 

 made me resent the premature publication of 

 Capt. Speke's papers : though the many-headed 

 may think little of such matters, a man who has 

 risked his life for a great discovery cannot sit 

 tamely to see it nullified. My views also about 

 retaining native nomenclature have ever been 

 fixed, and of the strongest : I still hold, with the 

 late venerable Mr Macqueen, 'Nothing can be 

 so absurd as to impose English names on any 

 part, but especially upon places in the remote 

 interior parts of Africa. This is,we believe, done 

 by no other nation. What nonsense it is calling 

 a part of Lake Nyanza the Eengal Archi- 

 pelago; a stagnant puddle, with water in it 

 only during the rains, or where the lake over- 

 flows, the Jordans, a name never heard of in 

 geography ' (The Kile Basin, pp. 109, 110). 



Such a breach once made is easily widened. 

 My companion wrote and spoke to mutual ac- 

 quaintances in petulant and provoking terms, 

 which rendered even recognition impossible. 

 They justified me, I then thought, in publishing 

 the Lake Hegions of Central Africa, where, smart- 

 ing under injury, my story was told. After the 

 lapse of a decade, when a man of sense can sit in 



